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There is no shortage of comments about us selling out or running advertisements as stories. As you might expect there is no shortage of mail with the same theme. What I enjoy most about them is all the different corporate entities and sometimes political parties, that we are supposedly working for. If even half of them were true, I would have a stack of W-2s as long as my arm every year for the tax man. The truth of the matter is, nobody here sits in their Microsoft smart chair, talking on their minion iPhone, while playing in the Google money pool. (If someone knows how to get into the Google money pool, please send me a mail.) Conspiracy theories have been around as long as man, so I guess it should come as no surprise that Slashdot has a few of it's own. Read below to find out who is pulling our strings.

Traditionally the Slashdot community has had a harsh view of Microsoft, its software, and especially its management. All the more reason for us to become pawns in the evil Windows army, and it would have worked if it wasn't for this guy and his irrefutable statistics.

On Mon, 9 Oct 2006 ******* wrote:
"I can't understand how you managed to convince so many *smart* people that you support the open source and free software movement. It couldn't be more obvious that you sold out to Microsoft in 2004. I've kept careful records of your stories for many years and I've got the evidence. Pre-2004 showed a negative Microsoft story rate of 87% and a positive Microsoft story rate of 13%. From 2004 until today the negative story rate has crashed to a mere 62% while the positive story rate has climbed to 38%. Am I to believe that a 25% increase in positive stories is not significant. When i comment on this trend I get marked as a troll, nice. I suppose that is a coincidence to. Good work I'm sure the current political administartion will own you soon. I used to enjoy your message before it became Bill and Bush's."

With the failing health of Steve Jobs, we thought it would be the perfect time to get firmly entrenched into the Apple hierarchy. It's a shame that our rabid love for Apple and all its products made our actions so transparent.

On Fri, 2 Feb ******* wrote:
"Apple sure does pay good don't they! Is there anyone not on the Apple payroll at Slashdot? If you're going to become an Apple mouthpiece you might want to try and hide it better! How much does a frontpage Slashdot story cost anyway? I hope it's a lot. If you're going to become Apple whores you might as well get paid well. Just know that I know it's rotten to the core!"

I have to give him credit for the, "rotten to the core" Apple thing. Usually the rants I get aren't so poetic. Most of the time they are rambling and confused, like this.

On Wed, 23 Apr ******** wrote"
"I noticed today that many Slashdot stories are listed on Google. I thought you were supposed to be a neutral internet party? I can't believe what you have as "news" if you are in cahoots with the "do no evil" gang. Almost everything I used to believe in is on Google now I was hoping that Slashdot would be strong enough to resist the Google money pool but I guess I was naive. Google is going to slowly absorb everything is that ok with you? it doesn't seem so bad when your playing volleyball or bringing your cat to work but it is. A cat is no trade for integrity. Look back at what you used to stand for and not greed or I will have to find a news source that hasn't been swallowed by Google."

Seriously. Like the time I caught the ferry over to Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for my shoe. So, I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days nickels had pictures of bumblebees on them. 'Give me five bees for a quarter', you'd say. Now, where were we? Oh, yeah...the important thing was that I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time. They didn't have white onions because of the war; the only thing you could get was those big yellow ones.

If you don't like disagree mail, then by all means contribute to it. Your clever arguments for its demise should be enough material to get the rest of us through to the next posting. Or if you would rather remain out of the limelight STOP READING THIS and then commenting negatively. Go read about cutting edge technology and leave us troll haters alone.

If there was a way to disable it like sigs or anything else here, it would be one thing.

Generally it could be argued that/. is about choice and provides a pretty decent set of tools to achieve this (user submitted stories/firehose/tagging/comments/comment rating and filtering/etc).

So aside from the fact that disagree mail is stupid and mostly insulting to those of us who do this work (I do technical work; posting and commenting on help-desk emails seems unoriginal [rinkworks.com] and asinine) this seems like a rath

Weird. I had to click on the link to come in here. Normally I just "j" past it in the newsreader, or scroll on my merry way. I'd love to have this new-fangled Internet of yours automatically clicks on every link and pulls pages (and comments forms, too!) for me...

I don't think its that people dislike the idea. I think its that we've all been around long enough that the crap posted here is just not funny.

I've had family members send me worse trolls, certainly far more amusing.

I think you'd get less complaints about this crap if someone else decided what was 'the worst of the worst' because this stuff is just lame and only entertaining to those who have never actually seen a good troll.

When the comments telling you to stop spewing the crap are better trolls than the

I was reading/. from 1998. I only registered so I could get in on the 10th anniversary party at the Beacon Hill Amazon office here in Sea-Town. If only I had registered back in the day I could pwn all the n00bs in UID wars.

At least the 10th anniversary party was cool. Met some people from my lab days I hadn't seen in half a dozen years.

Also why is the great grandparent modded flamebait? Doesn't anybody have a sense of humor? (Yeah I know, I must be new here.)

Disagree mail sure does pay good don't they! Is there anyone not on the Disagree mail payroll at Slashdot? If you're going to become an Disagree mail mouthpiece you might want to try and hide it better! How much does a frontpage Slashdot story cost anyway? I hope it's a lot. If you're going to become a Disagree mail whore you might as well get paid well. Just know that I know it's rotten to the core!

Agreed. Why is it when anything new comes to/. it's viciously attacked? OH NOES this new thing I don't have to read or pay attention to has shattered my existence into a thousand, tiny, pathetic pieces! KILL IT! RAAAAAH!

It's not as difficult as you simply believe to be listed in the rant sanctuary. A fervent rant against a yes comment is like turning around 360 degrees in the opposite direction, so it's clear as political speeches that you have no clue what they are talking about. Surely you have enough uncommon sense to surmise that to opine in the back alleys of slashdot is sublime when compared to posting on some other red comment news site. The evil underlords of slashdot have connived with trivial cunning to convince

I was in the Google money pool for a few years. Getting in is easy, as long as you can pass 4 hellish interviews and wait 6 months for HR to respond.

Having said that, what you really need is a time machine. Go back to August 2004 and get hired. Even if you get a meager grant back then, you'll make out pretty well. Getting hired now, well, they aren't as forthcoming with the stock as they once were, and the base pay is pretty terrible. Free food, though.

Pay is horrible? Horrible compared to the industry average, or horrible compared to what you'd expect if you made it through the damned interviews which are even worse than the bullshit microsoft makes you go through?

Just curious... not bitter at all at the seemingly irrelevent brain teaser interview questions that have little to do with anything. Do they at least start out at a 6 figure salary if you make it through their mental maze?

Being by 2004, I think Windows XP SP2 came out and solved lot of the origional problems with XP. As well most modern computers can run XP smoothly and easilly. As well XP solved a lot of the problems that 95, 98 and ME had. Windows 2000 was still consiered Pro-Grade so not a lot of people used it. But XP being the first consumer focused using the NT Kernel. Also many of the virus and such started to clear up. Code Red and such... So yea there are less MS Bashing as they did fix a lot of the major problems they had.

Ok lets try again... XP is the best OS that Microsoft Made for home use. It is not perfect or the best inclass. But it is good enough for most. Being that it is good enough there is a newtral additude thus. Less people hating it.

If even half of them were true, I would have a stack of W-2s as long as my arm every year for the tax man. The truth of the matter is, nobody here sits in their Microsoft smart chair, talking on their minion iPhone, while playing in the Google money pool. (If someone knows how to get into the Google money pool, please send me a mail.)

Judging from the comments that most Idle stories bring these days, I think I must be about the only one to find these segments worthy of at least a chuckle.
Of course they're mostly groaners, but at least I know what I'm getting myself into when I open it:)

Don't dismiss this disagree mail thing. I'm finding it valuable actually as a sociological study. Think about it: there are people out there who actually get inflamed enough to write in and post this stuff. What kind of mind honestly works this way?
To me, it's a viewpoint into a perspective way different from my own. And that is useful, because it reminds me that the world is not filled with my clones who all perceive the world the same way I do.
Plus it is funny.

Thinking that diverse opinions are limited to slashdot is a mistake. You might as well go read Conservapedia if you want to make a social study of various, erm... perspectives. I'd rather have this site be about news for nerds and stuff that matters.

...and then there's the concept that for every one person that actually writes in with an incomprehensible rant about anything, there are a thousand or more equally disturbed and marginally functional individuals, who, sitting in their parents' basement all day, sleep-deprived and sunshine-deficient, are just thinking about writing something oh-so-clever to them, but virtually unreadable to the normal world upstairs, if not even to their blogmates and fellow fraggers who are equally incomprehensible but hid

It would be a lot better if they specifically addressed the whole Roland Pipsqueel orwhathisnameis ( I can't be arsed to look for one of his stores) accusations.

Sorry, it's obvious to anyone whose been here a while that certain stories are posted onto the front page because someone in the slashdot compound is getting compensation "above and beyond" the usual ad revenue. Roland's stories are an example of that -for more just browse through some of the stories tagged as slashvertisements.

I don't really have a huge problem if Slashdot gets paid to put things on the front page, as that is how most media works.

That being said, I have to agree with you. There are 'stories' that make the front page that are obviously ads, and the mocking done by samzenpus actually argues that the slashdot editors DO get paid. I have a hard time believing that the people running slashdot are dumb enough to believe that payoffs come in W-2s. Saying that a lack of W-2s from companies is any indication as to

Hate to comment twice in one article, but I have to say: Show the names of the people writing you! Maybe not their email (though that would be OK), but at least their slashdot ID, if they have one. Shit, make it a requirement that they have a slashdot account before they write in.

No one makes you read these stories, if you don't like them, don't read them, that simple.

Although this batch isn't funny, some of the stories were so random that I actually did laugh (of course after my headache stopped due to the bad coloring scheme.) Post more pointless stories imo, like the guy talking about racism...

C'mon,/., is that all you got? All of these geeks on Red Bull, off their meds, raging on hormones, and this is all we get? Puhleeze. Do us all the favor and just pull this thread's plug. Now-- before you make the rest of us growl, gnash our teeth, and wail. Mod me incredulous.

I think the reason most people bitch about the Idle articles is not due to the fact that there is an Idle section or what it's about, but rather because it kind of a let down. I can't believe that after more than 10 years of being on the cross hairs of every nutjob and bored teenager on the internet, these are the weirdest emails you've received or the strangest stories you can tell.

If you're going to take up space on the front page with this, you better make it worth the while for people who read the site.

"There is no shortage of comments about us selling out or running advertisements as stories. As you might expect there is no shortage of mail with the same theme."

There is also no shortage of people who find this "disagree mail" thing to be a complete waste of time and editor resources, especially when they STILL can't seem to make the reply box width more than some horribly miniscule value. Listen to the tags, guys. Make it stop!

It is foolish to believe that slashdot is in the pockets of MS or Google or Apple. Slashdot editors are above that. They equally and openly take ANYONE's money for a frontpage story. No questions asked other then HOW MUCH

I read it and replied to it. You didn't read it but clicked the link and replied to it anyway?

Man, I only have enough free time to read and comment on the things that interest me. Can I borrow some of your free time to have the luxury of not reading but commenting on boring, uninteresting things?

Man, I only have enough free time to read and comment on the things that interest me. Can I borrow some of your free time to have the luxury of not reading but commenting on boring, uninteresting things?

You must be new here. Free time?!? For most of us, this is a freaking job!

Why is parent marked troll? Idle should be killed or hidden from view somehow or seriously changed.

I think every Idle topic has been tagged as these: "pleasestop, humor, idleispants, makeitstop". You think that would say something as most posters give every single topic 3 tags simply begged for idle to be killed. I don't understand what/. could possibly be thinking. Obviously they ARENT thinking the same now as they were when they picked the slogan....